When do the reef-builders make babies? Ningaloo's corals just told us

A reef can't recover just because some corals survive a bleaching event — it recovers because survivors make babies. That's why a Curtin University team spent their days examining 20 colonies of massive Porites corals at Ningaloo Reef off Western Australia. For the first time, they pinned down the spawning window of two key reef-builders, Porites lutea and Porites lobata: both prepare to spawn in the reef's early-autumn mass spawning. The regional timing matters — Ningaloo's corals spawn in early autumn while the same species near Dampier spawn in late spring — so restoration crews now know exactly when to collect eggs and larvae. Published in Marine Biology, it's the kind of small timing discovery that could rebuild reefs.